Darling: Wine for OS X Applications

The latest in the "interesting, but perhaps misguided" department, Darling is a project that aims to build a WINE-like environment for running OS X applications on Linux. As with many projects that deal with reverse engineering proprietary systems, Darling faces significant challenges. However, if Darling is successful, the Linux desktop would have access to some of the best desktop applications available. Darling is still in very early stages; if you believe in this vision, I’m sure there is a place for you to help in moving the project forward. I have to admit that my first reaction to the project was "why does this exist?" Common logic would say that the development efforts that Darling requires would be better spent improving native Linux applications and environments. Apple’s OS X is a fast moving target too. Desktop developers are constantly needing to update their code to remove or replace deprecated API calls or add support for new functionality their customers will expect. I like to think that anything is possible in code, but Darling faces an uphill battle. To see why this is, conceptually at least, possible, we need to take a brief (extremely brief) look at the